Survival in Auschwitz

An Explanation for the Holocaust Everyone who has taken a history course that goes through the 20th century knows about the atrocities performed in Nazi Germany; 11 million people exterminated and countless others put into concentration camps with unimaginable conditions. But most people do not try to explain how the German soldiers could do these things to other human beings. Primo Levi in his book Survival in Auschwitz attempts to answer this question. He begins by explaining the physical and psychological transformation of the prisoners and how that enabled the Germans to see the prisoners as inhuman and therefore oppress-able. Levi believes that the Germans treated the Jewish prisoners horrendously because of the prisoner’s inhuman appearances and the German’s beliefs of racial superiority. The immediate effects of the concentration camps on the inmates were both physical and psychological. As soon as they got to the camps, the Jewish prisoners were immediately stripped of their clothes, hair, and name. The only thing Levi had left was a tattooed number on his arm, “already my own body was no longer mine” (Levi 37). Levi describes this transformation as a loss of identity and the becoming of a phantom, “There is no where to look in a mirror, but our appearance stands in front of us, reflected in a hundred livid faces, in a hundred miserable and sordid puppets” (Levi 26). They were forced into submission by beatings and the ever-present threat of death. The knowledge of imminent death was especially detrimental to the psyche of the inmates, “you are not home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney” (Levi 29). Although they were beaten and altered physically, Levi believes the most damage happened psychologically. The whole law of the camp was based on keeping the prisoners oppressed and without rights, “This fills me with anger, although I already know that it is in the normal order of things that the privileged oppress...

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...Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz; The Nazi Assault on Humanity. 1st edition.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
I. Survival in Auschwitz is the unique autobiographical account of how a young man endured the atrocities of a Nazi death camp and lived to tell the tale.
Primo Levi, a 24-year-old Jewish chemist from Turin Italy, was captured by the fascist militia in December 1943 and deported to Camp Buna-Monowitz in Auschwitz. The trip by train took 4 long days in a jam-packed boxcar without food or water. Once there, interrogations by the SS of age and health determined life as a prisoner or untimely death. Levi along with hundreds of fellow Jews were stripped of their clothes, given rags to wear, had their heads shaved and were tattooed with a number on their left arm for life. The number would be their solitary identity; it told time of entrance into the camp, the nationality of the individual and was the only way one could get their daily food rations.
In the camp, better known as the Lager, a man had to be cunning. He had to learn how to get extra soup and bread rations, avoidance of extremely hard labor whenever possible, and to never take your eyes off of your belongings or they would be stolen. It was as much survival of the smartest as it was survival of the fittest. It was every man for himself; you could not show pity on your fellow...

...﻿Survival in Auschwitz
The Holocaust is considered one of the worst genocides in history, known for it’s merciless killings and torture of Jews and other outcasts. The cruelness of the genocide can be witnessed first hand in the novel Survival in Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz was written by Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who was a prisoner in the concentration camp of Auschwitz when he was the age of twenty-four. He managed to leave Auschwitz alive, and dedicated the rest of his life to writing about the Holocaust and his experiences. Levi goes into detail about the horrors of the camp, and explains how prison effects how humans act morally. The Nazis degrade the Jews so deeply that they view them as animals, not important enough to receive basic human needs. Being treated as an animal takes a large toll on the normal ethics that the Jews practice outside of prison. It becomes evident how the prisoners change the way they act throughout their stay at Auschwitz. Because of being treated as non-humans, the Jews resorted to stealing and stopped helping others. According to Primo Levi, the Nazis dehumanized concentration camp internees; as a result, Jews were forced to create their own corrupt system of morals to survive.
There is no question that the guarding Nazis dehumanized the Jews in Auschwitz. The acts Nazis committed...

...﻿
To Survive in Auschwitz requires luck as well as the strength of one’s personal ability, and physical capability as Primo Levi describes in his book Survival in Auschwitz. Primo Levi an Italian Jew, was 24 when he was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. He managed to survive the horrific memories throughout the Holocaust, one of the most devastating events in history throughout world war II. The Holocaust represent a time when Hitler and his Nazis army killed 6 million Jews men women and children, and an additional 6 million others, in death by starvation, gassing, or brutality.
Levi's use the phrase “the demolition of man” as he describes his initial entry into the camp system, men like himself were stripped of all of their personal identity, millions of men and women were forced to become numbers and to fall in line with a system that demanded absolute obedience. Many struggle for their very existence against fellow prisoners, a large portion of them died as a result of the brutality they incurred.
In the “Canto of Ulysses” Levi again talks about different experience and relationship with other inmates. He refers to Jean the Alsatian Pikolo as higher ranked prisoners and Kapo assistant who was in charged of prisoners. Although Pikolo is a prisoner himself, he was the Kapo assistant, however I believe as part of Levi’s luck, he was able to survive because he was the one teaching him Italian.
As I was reading this, I...

...dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself." This short quote is taken from Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz". It depicts a true story of Primo Levi during the Holocaust, who was relocated to an extermination camp after beginning a great life after college. Primo was captured with a resistant group from Italy. He used his college education and degree in chemistry to stay alive.
The above quote brings a similar quote to mind. "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his own soul". That quote is taken from the front wall of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Olivia, Minnesota. It gives an idea about our savior Jesus Christ's life. He spent his whole life teaching the word of God and humanity to all people of any race or religion. These two, Primo Levi and Jesus Christ, lived similar lives.
Primo lived growing up as a Jewish citizen during the bad economic times of Europe. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party blamed this economic tragedy on the Jewish society. Primo tried to fight against this, but like most Jews was found guilty and taken to conservation camps. Here he was giving the chance of what he learned in life to stay alive and to see himself leave the hellish camp. During his time in Auschwitz he was deprived of everything from his clothes to even his name. After the liberation of Auschwitz, Primo again had nothing. Necessities and goods...

...Wesley Groll
HIST 102 MWF 10:30-11:20
Survival in Auschwitz Book Review
In Primo Levi’s autobiography, Survival in Auschwitz, he identifies some major factors which he can attribute to his survival including the physical state of a prisoner, ability to find companionship and their mental condition, and the timing of liberation. The horrible acts carried out by the captors at Buna, Krankenbau, and Auschwitz concentration and labor camps were not the focus for Levi’s autobiography, yet it was the survival of these acts that was the focus. Primo Levi being an Anti-Fascist Italian Jew from Turin was arrested in December 1943 and sent to a prison camp immediately before being sent to Auschwitz in February 1943. He accounts that millions of Jews were just murdered and cremated upon being deported to the concentration camps.
Due to Primo Levi’s physical state, he was selected to be put in a work camp, as opposed to being sent straight to a concentration camp. It was astonishing that he survived as long as he did, because the average time of survival in one of these labor camps, such as Buna where synthetic rubber was manufactured, was only 3 months because of the physical stress and malnutrition on the body. Shortly after being deported to Auschwitz Levi records passing under the famous metal archway that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” in...

...﻿Zahria Sanders
Ms.Hamilton
CP LIT
26th, October 2014
The story Survival in Auschwitz is about the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi government and its collaborators. It’s strange that the word holocaust itself means “Burned whole”, yet I understand. During World War ll the Nazi’s collected Jews and killed them or shipped them to different concentration camps. A sign on the door in the text displayed, “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which meant “Work gives freedom”. It was ironic because they all worked until they were free- by death!
To begin with, I feel like living through the Holocaust is not like living through a meal or a job interview in that, when the actual events are finished, the experience does not stop. Like other kinds of extreme trauma, it stays with a person for the rest of their life. In the words of Jean Améry, who was interrogated at the hands of the SS, "He who was tortured stays tortured." The structure of the text itself bears this out: it does not have an ending, a stopping point, but simply ceases in mid-story, while relating some postwar events in Levi's life. It does not allow us the luxury of seeing Levi's story as a discrete suggestion of experience, but rather as a segment in an ongoing whole. I do not agree with the actions but I see today that it still occurs as discrimination, isolation, alienation and segregation....

...EXAM QUESTION 1
PART A
Survival in Auschwitz written by Primo Levi is a first-hand description of the atrocities which took place in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. The book provides an explicit depiction of camp life: the squalor, the insufficient food supply, the seemingly endless labour, cramped living space, and the barter-based economy which the prisoners lived. Levi through use of his simple yet powerful words outlined the motive behind Auschwitz, the tactical dehumanization and extermination of Jews. This paper will discuss experiences and reactions of Jews who labored in Auschwitz, and elaborate on the pre-Auschwitz experiences of Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and gassed to death on their arrival, which had not been included in Survival in Auschwitz.
Upon arrival into Auschwitz, Levi’s group of 650 was quickly divided into two groups. Only 135 of the 650 from Levi’s train were admitted into Auschwitz, the other 515 went immediately to the gas chambers. The remaining 135 are brought into the camp where they are immediately stripped naked, shaved, and tattooed on their arm a number which would become their identity. Levi recalled the confusion and humiliation he felt as he was forced to assimilate into his new surroundings. The process of admitting prisoners into the camp was hurried, as to not...

...Survival in Auschwitz tells of the horrifying and inhuman conditions of life in the Auschwitz death camp as personally witnessed and experienced by the author, Primo Levi. Levi is an Italian Jew and chemist, who at the age of twenty-five, was arrested with an Italian resistance group and sent to the Nazi Auschwitz death camp in Poland in the end of 1943. For ten terrible months, Levi endured the cruel and inhuman death camp where men slaved away until it was time for them to die. Levi thoroughly presents the hopeless existence of the prisoners in Auschwitz, whose most basic human rights were stripped away, when in Chapter 2 he states, "Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself" (27). With Survival in Auschwitz, Primo Levi provides a stark examination of human survival in the dehumanized society of a Nazi death camp. Throughout the book, Levi reinforces the theme that the prisoners of the death camp are reduced to being no longer men, but instead animals that must struggle to survive day by day or face certain death.
In Chapter 2, appropriately titled "On the Bottom", Levi discusses his experience of being...